


dear friend; we miss you as well

by 8The_Great_Perhaps8



Series: [RETURNED UNOPENED] invalid mailing address [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Age Reversal, Age Swap, Beating Up Inanimate Objects to Channel Your Rage Wayne Style, Canonical Character Death, Don't Try This At Home, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, If You Try This At Home Talk To Someone, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Kidnapping, Letters, Past Torture, Schizophrenia Written By Schizophrenic, Schizophrenic Tim Drake, Stream of Consciousness, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, dad Bruce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:22:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8The_Great_Perhaps8/pseuds/8The_Great_Perhaps8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(please, feel free to call upon us)<br/>or, jason's rebirth in letters from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dear brother; i miss the jokes you used to tell

**Author's Note:**

> :3c

Dear Jason,

I don’t know how to write this letter.

I don’t know what to say to my little brother, back from the dead. I don’t know if I should be mad at you for what you’ve done, or forgiving for what you’ve gone through, or depressed for the fact that you don’t think you could have come to us for help, or if I should be afraid of what might happen if I can’t choose right.

The right answer is probably that nobody can tell me how to feel, and that I will probably feel all those emotions and more in the coming turmoil, but I shouldn’t be afraid to confront them.

But god, JayJay, I am so scared. I’m scared that if I forgive you, Damian and Tim and Dad and Dick won’t forgive me. I’m scared that forgiving you is the wrong choice. I’m scared that if I don’t forgive you, I’ll never get another chance. I’m scared of making the choice, and I’m scared that if I forgive you, I’ll take it back later. I’m scared of thinking that whatever you do means that you aren’t worthy of my forgiveness. I’m scared because I’m saying _if_ I forgive you instead of when, because even I’m not sure how to react in this situation.

God, Jason, is there a manual for this? Does the Justice League have pamphlets for what to do when a loved one comes back from the dead? Is there a ‘for dummies’ book on resurrection via somebody’s fuck up?

I don’t know what the fuck I should say to you.

Is that okay? Is it alright that I don’t know what I should say to you? Is it okay that I can’t tell you honestly, sincerely, that I forgive you right now? God, Jason, everything is so visceral right now. I don’t know how I’ve kept this paper in one piece. I couldn’t tell you if you asked. God, this is so fucked up.

Jason, I miss you so much. How could you even tell me that I don’t? Do you think that this is a cakewalk for everyone that isn’t you? But of course, no, you don’t, because you’re so good. You’re telling us what you’ve done wrong, you’re saying that you don’t like the bad, mean part of you anymore than we do, you’re reminiscing.

I miss you, Jason, extreme tendencies and kidnapping and all. You’re my brother, of course I miss you. You followed directly in my footsteps. Of course I miss you.

I knew that the money didn’t help, Jason. The money never helps. You get the money, and your parent spends it on stupid shit they don’t need, like gadgets and Batman-detecting software and other shit. The money runs out.

I’m glad that you aren’t ashamed of where you came from, Jason. I’m proud of you.

I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out your clue about where you went.

I got you a plant, Jason, from the planet I was on. Supposedly, it encourages positive and creative thinking via the spores it releases, and I thought that you would love it. I figured that you would plant it in your room, and let it take over, if that was what it needed. Maybe Dad or Damian would make you move it to the greenhouse, if it got to you too much. If it was more like happy pills and less like a plant. You’d take care of it, like you take care of all your plants, with all your heart and soul.

It was called Coire, Jason. It had golden leaves and it bloomed blue and green off of long stems that you could make into flower crowns.

And no, Jason, I didn’t realize that you had fucking died. I landed on the Watchtower, and no one was there. They were there, obviously, can’t leave a super laser unsupervised, but they weren’t conscious. Like they were on autopilot.

No one even told me what had happened until I was back in Gotham, until I was at Dad’s back door and Alfred answered, and his eyes were red and puffy, and he thought that I already knew.

I didn’t, and when Alfred said funeral, I dropped the fucking plant.

Alfred didn’t even say anything. He just brought me inside and let me lie down in my old room until I stopped being catatonic and woke the fuck up.

And when I woke up, I planted your plant in the greenhouse.

I hate that plant, Jason, and I don’t even have a good reason why. If I hadn’t bought the plant, there’s no reason that you wouldn’t have died. You didn’t run away for the plant. The Joker didn’t become who he is because of the plant.

I dunno. Maybe it’s some deep shit like the plant came back and you didn’t. Maybe the plant is just goddamn ugly.

But I planted it. I planted it and I watered it and I followed all the gardening instructions exactly.

It died maybe seven months after you died, and me and Dami and Tim had a bonfire with it. We took it and we went out to Tim’s folks’ place and we set it on fire in their backyard.

Sorry, Jason. I know how much you love(d?) plants.

But I took care of it the best I could. Beyond following all the instructions, I talked to it, like you liked to talk to your plants about your day. I would just sit in the greenhouse, next to Coire, and I would tell it about you and how I missed you and how I wished that there had been something I could have done.

Maybe it’s because I always got mad during these pseudo—therapy sessions, because of the negative energy of my words, that it died. But it helped me.

We were all fucked up after you died, JayJay. Tim would go down to the cave and beat the shit out of a punching bag, until the bag was broken and his knuckles were bloody, and then he would put up another one. He hit crooks hard, and he almost hit Dad, a couple of times, and he broke windows and took training dummies out to the yard and beat the shit out of them.

Damian… I don’t know what happened to Damian. He either never slept, or wouldn’t get up. He stayed over at Dad’s after you died, like all of us did, but Damian didn’t come close to any of us. He would just sleep in bed for days, or he would start working manically on some fucking gadget. More than once, when he was working, he would raise his head and start to call for you, and then his eyes would dim and he would throw his work at a wall and he would go back to bed. I don’t even know if he ate, but he lost way too much weight, and stopped going out on patrols. Like he was bored with everything.

Then there was Dad.

Dad wouldn’t look at any of us for a while after you died. He actively attempted to keep Tim from going on patrol, with about as much success as the GCPD had with stopping criminals.

We fought a lot with each other. Tim would scream and Dad would talk back, in hushed tones; or Tim would scream and Damian would scream back; or Alfred would snap and Tim would comfort; or someone would yell and I would talk to the plant; or Dad would demand action and I would plant; or Damian would chuck his project at the wall and Alfred would stress-clean and Tim would yell and Damian would yell back and Dad would yell at the both of them and Damian would yell at him and Alfred would try to deescalate the situation and they would push him out and I would talk to the plant and come back to the three of them still yelling and so I would scream at them and we would yell and scream until we all lost our voices and Tim would go to the cave to beat up punching bags and Dad would go back to his office and Alfred would bake your favorite cookies and I would go to my room and make blank cootie—catchers and Damian would go lie down somewhere and not react to anyone.

Fuck.

It was three months of that, JayJay, of me talking to an alien plant and Alfred stress cleaning and stress cooking and Dad staying in his office and screaming at his kids and Tim beating the shit out of everything and Damian sleeping and throwing electronics at walls.

Here’s the thing, Jason. Even when we fight, we’re still family. Even during the big fights, like when Dad wanted to kick Tim out and I refused, like when Damian didn’t think that I was responsible enough to be Robin, like whenever Dad starts getting too dark and we all have to drag him out of his office for board games or for movie night or for anything.

And that’s the thing. Three months of screaming and fighting and everything is enough to put a toll on anyone. We were all tired of it.

Damian was the first to come out of it, by actually finishing one of his projects. It’s a holo projector that can show up to three different Batmans jumping around in an area at a time. He left it outside of Dad’s office, and insisted on telling me and Tim about it separately.

I didn’t really like that. I was fine talking to Coire about all my woes and worries. I didn’t need Damian intruding on me.

Following Damian’s amazing news, Tim mellowed out significantly. He still hit the bad guys too hard for Dad to like, but he stopped hitting punching bags until the seam broke, and the number of dead training dummies in the yard decreased significantly.

Then, ~~my~~ your plant died. It wasn’t a surprise, exactly, but finally seeing it completely red and utterly dead, it was a bit of a slap from reality.

The bonfire was the next day.

Dick’s parents died the next week, and Dad adopted him the week after that.

That was when Dad finally started coming back to us, with his pride whenever we did basically anything, with his stupid jokes he told at dinner.

Dick is a good kid, JayJay. He likes banana bread and he’s allergic to tomatoes and he cheats at Mario Kart. He hates to do his homework, supposedly because his parents wouldn’t let him practice gymnastics until he was done, but Tim thinks it’s just because the kid is balls-awful at everything but physics.

And when he got back from getting kidnapped, he was confused, more than anything. He didn’t understand you, and didn’t understand why you didn’t hurt him or why you kidnapped him if you didn’t want to hurt him.

And don’t you dare try to guilt trip me through this, Jason Peter Todd. I am not the world’s greatest detective, and I am not the world’s subtlest person, and I am sorry if I didn’t guess that your clue was ‘he’s where I was last’ based off of blood-red graffiti that said “jason todd was here’. I am no one’s keeper, Jason Todd, and it is not my fault that you held him for Dad to find and Dad didn’t find him.

I wish that I could say sorry for that, Jason. I wish I could apologize for not finding Dick, for not finding you in Ethiopia, for not telling you that I love you in person, for not following your script. I wish I could say that I’m sorry for being angry at you. You just came back from the dead after being beaten to death by the Joker, and being held underwater at the Lazarus Pit by Damian’s mother. That’s something terrible, even without factoring in your entire life. I have no right to be mad at you. You died, which means that you get to be mad at everyone and I get be tearful and excited that you’re back, even if you did kidnap my little brother.

My little brother kidnapped my little brother, how’s that for— for something, I’m sure. One of those goddamn literary tropes. My little brother who I loved and who died kidnapped my little brother, who I love and whose parents died.

There’s no right answer for this one, JayJay. No easy way out. I can’t be the sobbing older sister, who is so happy to see you that I can’t help but forgive you for everything you’ve done. I can’t be the girl you saved from mourning because, I hate to say it, I did mourn you. I lost you and I talked to an alien bush-tree for some seven months and I set it on fire. We all mourned you and we moved on, as much as we could in twelve months. Thirty-three percent of the time you were with us passed after you died, Jason, and we tried our best.

I can’t be some action movie side character girl. I can’t sob because you came back and forgive you for everything. I can’t still be so entrenched in mourning you that you’re the only thing I think about. I can’t spend my days just doing whatever while sad music plays and I keep mistaking strangers for you.

I miss you like hell, JayJay. I miss you ~~to death~~ a lot. I want to see you here, at home, and I want you and Dick to become friends. I want you to be a good older brother and I want you to cook waffles on Sundays and I want you to play ridiculously bad eighties movies for movie night again. I want you to pull stupid pranks on Tim and Dad and I want you to sleep until three on holidays and I want you to be the best Christmas gift-giver again. I fucking miss you.

I think that that’s a good start, JayJay. I’ll start with missing you, and we’ll move up from there. I’ll forgive you for things slowly, like a paint-by-numbers. Maybe I’ll come visit you. What’s your address? What apartment are you in? You and I are both shit at cleaning, so I’ll probably have to bring Damian along. We’ll move from your apartment to my apartment to Damian’s apartment to Tim’s apartment, probably, and then we’ll end up back at the Manor, where all of this started. Where Batman and Robin started, where Batman and Robin always start. You would be our brother again, JayJay. 

Our brother and Dad’s son and another vigilante. Red Hood, right? It would be the Falconer, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Red Hood. You and Tim could have some kind of motif.

I’m glad that you’re still fighting crime, JayJay, even if it’s not in a way Dad or Tim or Damian can understand. You’re still you, at heart. Still the kid who traded himself for hostages, still the kid who takes people back to Arkham and insists on reviews for Arkham guards and doctors and insists on livable conditions in Stonegate and got rightfully angry at that ambassador’s son bastard. 

I wanna tell you something, JayJay. Poison Ivy broke out a few months ago, and yeah, sure, what else is new, but she asked about you. Dick wasn’t on patrol yet, and it was just me and Damian against her. She wanted to know where you were.

I guess I just figured that everyone knew that you had died. I figured that it would be big news back in Arkham, Joker killed the Robin, time for a party.

It took a bit of Damian having a breakdown for her to realize that you weren’t going to come in dodging and parrying and trading plant facts with her.

She didn’t surrender for us, obviously, but she went easy on us. Pulled her punches. Tossed out a few thornless roses. Made mistakes she hadn’t made since her first appearance.

Who knows. Maybe the plant lady misses you. Maybe she just felt bad that you died. Maybe she caught a cold or something. But she sure seemed shocked.

Anyways, Jason. JayJay. We all miss you, no matter what you think. Damian has those dumb pictures of you hung up on his fridge. Tim has birthday cards from you on top of his ridiculously tall bookshelf. Dad—

Well, I’m not really sure. He has pictures of you hung up all over the place, and one taped to the computer in the cave. He misses you too.

And Alfred obviously misses you, too, since you and I were the only two people who knew how to make so much as cereal when he got his hands on us. He keeps saying how much he needs help in the kitchen, and not looking at Dad, and Dad muttering something about scrambled eggs and taxes, and Alfred snipes back about embezzlement and scones.

Anyway, back to the point. I hope you find what you’re looking for with this, JayJay. I hope you help yourself and I hope you help the people who need it the most. I hope you come back to us and I hope you find your niche in Gotham and I hope that you figure out what to do with yourself.

Or, at the very least, I hope you figure out how to forge yourself some identity documents, or get hold of a valid reason for Jason Todd to be alive again besides magic.

Feel free to come visit me any time, JayJay. Hugs and kisses. I’ll have Lucky Charms and Ferris Bueller ready.

Thanks for saying that I was always your favorite Robin. I’m going to make that into a tasteful wall hanging like that ‘live laugh love’ stuff.

Go to hell, southern belle,

your very favorite older sister,

Stephanie Brown-Wayne


	2. dear brother, how i've missed your comedic spirit

Dear Jason,

I miss you, kiddo. I miss hearing about you and your adventures as Robin and seeing the dumb jokey cards you would send me from the ninety-nine cent aisle at Walgreen’s and being the best in self-defense.

And I’m kind of glad that you’re pissed, Jason. That you’re finally letting it out, instead of holding it tight and letting hissing steam come out. That you’re confronting your problems head on and not making dumb assumptions and running away from them and hiding from them and hoping that they don’t come to you.

It’s not fair that you never got to get mad, Jaybird. It’s not fair that you had to bottle it all up and hold it with you until—

Well, until you died, I guess. You were constantly pissed off with no outlet for it, for your whole life, and then you died and it got all shook up like soda pop and then you came back to life and you exploded. 

Don’t you let yourself explode along with it, Jaybird. Let out your anger, but for god’s sakes, don’t let it burn you up.

I did.

I let my anger burn me up and I made dumb decisions after you died. I beat the crap out of punching bags and murdered training dummies and stayed up late scribbling in my crazy book and I screamed at Bruce and Damian and Steph and Alfred and I wrote run-on sentences until my fingernails bled.

I went off my meds, Jason. Went all crazy Tim. Fucked myself up with hallucinations and delusions and all that shit. All that crazy rich boy Arkham bait.

If you think that I’m the motherfucker who would send my kid brother to Arkham, you’re a fucking idiot.

Who do you think was scared of getting shoved into that shithole first? Who do you think was terrified of someone finding out that I was on meds and reporting it to the tabloids, to the papers? Who do you think has had Arkham as the boogeyman in their closet since they were fourteen?

Nobody in my family is ever going to get sent to that shithole. Not if I have anything to say about it.

And it’s not like I would have to say much about it, considering that Damian and Bruce would have anybody’s head on a stick for suggesting Arkham as a primary care provider.

Jason, we aren’t the bad guys. Nobody at the manor wants you in Arkham. Nobody at the manor wants you in prison. Nobody at the manor wants you ~~dead~~ to suffer.

I don’t think that there is a bad guy in this situation, Jaybird. I don’t think that there’s a black and white morality chessboard lying around. There’s no clearly marked boxes saying ‘go here if good.’

It’s not even a gradient at this point. At this point, our morality has devolved into some sort of tie-dyed mess that nobody even knows how to navigate anymore. Nobody knows what appropriate punishments are for criminals, nobody understands proportionality.

And before you even start, Jason, that wasn’t a dig at you. Don’t call the papers, but I do think that you’re doing good. I think that killing people who run kiddie porn rings is absolutely the right thing to do. I think that there are some people in this world who cannot, and should not, be forgiven.

I wish the Joker were dead, Jaybird.

I wish he were dead for what he did to you. I wish that for once, just once, Bruce had murdered someone. I wish that Bruce could have seen what the Joker still being in Gotham was doing to all of us. To have to see him every day, to know whenever he escaped Arkham, to hear his fucking taunts about Robin—

Christ, I almost killed him myself.

I’m don’t think that you’ve ever seen me off my meds, Jason. You’ve seen pretty much every other ugly facet of mine— the way I eat my breakfast, the fact that I can never pick up on when _someone_ is trying to trick me into saying something dirty, the fact that I dog-ear library books— but I don’t think that you’ve ever seen me med-free, all crazy’d up.

I get violent, Jason.

I beat the shit out of the training toys that we had, then went out on patrol and hit Mr. Freeze too hard and kicked Harley Quinn off a roof. I yelled at cops and yelled at storekeepers and yelled at Dad and Dami and Steph.

I never wanted any of the family to see me like that. I didn’t want them to ever see me at my worst, but here we are, anyways. I was at my worst, and you were dead, and you were everywhere I went.

You were in my apartment in the afternoons, watching bad telenovelas and worse cooking shows. You were in the library when I visited the manor, listening to your too-loud music and reading books that were stressful for Bruce to read. You were on the rooftops, holding onto the ledge to keep yourself from leaping early. You were in the cave, during school research on the computer. You were in the Watchtower, making fun of Hal and laughing at Flash’s dumb jokes and looking at Wonder Woman and Superman like they were suns. You were in Mount Justice, cooking with M’gann.

Actually, you were literally in Mount Justice. You have a holographic statue for some godawful reason.

Connor likes to sit down there sometimes and listen to white noise. It’s not healthy, but god only knows the last time Connor woke up and said to himself, “You know what? I think that I’m going to make healthy decisions today.”

I probably shouldn’t be making jokes about your holographic grave marker, but you would laugh too, Jaybird. You’re striking a Wonder Woman pose, and you have a holographic box for your holographic legs, and you’re wearing Damian’s original outfit, the one with the tightie greenies. Maybe it’s supposed to be iconic, but it just looks like one of the gag holos you would set up everywhere with enough technology.

Sorry, Jaybird. I’m sure that you would think it’s lovely.

(It’s not lovely at all and I’m pretty sure that I saw Artemis make a face at it when it was unveiled.)

Anyways.

Our mirror isn’t at the manor any more.

I didn’t snap and shatter it, or anything, but I set it on fire. Close enough?

The thing is, Jaybird, before you came to the manor, the attic was my quiet place. Where I always went when I wanted privacy or quiet or just got tired of being in my room.

I guess some things never change.

Because the way the attic is set up, remember, there’s no way to get in without seeing that fucking mirror.

And all I could ever see in that mirror was you, Jaybird, just after I had busted you for getting ready to run away. Your eyes bloodshot and swollen and puffy and me just sitting there being unnecessary.

So me and Dami and Steph burned it.

Our bonfire was like, a cleansing ceremony. Steph burned her therapy plant, which was from the planet she was on when you died. It was absolutely hideous, and it just about killed every other plant in the greenhouse.

When you see her, she’ll tell you about it to death.

I started writing this letter as soon as I finished the one you had sent me, so that it would be the first one that you would get. I want to be the first one to send back the olive branch, and I want it to be successful. 

I’m sorry that you’re rejecting Bruce now, of all times, Jason. I think that right now is when the two of you need each other more than ever. I know that you don’t want to admit it, Jaybird, but you’re coming out of a traumatic experience, and you need to talk to someone you love about it. You need to talk to someone who knows how to deal with emotional teens, and as you so aptly said, I am more than definitely not that person. I barely know how to handle emotional twenty-somethings and forty-somethings.

I don’t even know how to handle an emotional me, so there’s no way that I could handle emotional you.

Bruce gets you, Jaybird, and he loves you, and he desperately wants you to come back and be a part of this family. Bruce wants you to come back for Christmas dinner so that the whole family can learn an important lesson.

You don’t have to call him dad, not if you don’t want to, but you should talk to him. Get all your anger out in person so that you aren’t rewriting the same letter a hundred times because you kept tearing the paper, or because you keep angry crying and messing up that runny ink that you like to use.

If not Bruce, if Bruce is completely off limits to you, then talk to Damian or Alfred. Talk. To. Someone. That isn’t a suggestion, it’s me pulling big brother rank and telling you that if I don’t hear from one of them about you talking to them in the next week, I will ask Wonder Woman to come to Gotham to help bring you back from the dark side.

And even if you could beat her, don’t act like you wouldn’t be completely and utterly embarrassed by the whole ordeal.

Hell, talk to Wonder Woman if you want! Talk to any Leaguer! I know for a fact that Flash has died and come back to life at least once.

… 

Flash was the second Leaguer we called when you went to Ethiopia. We asked him to look for you, all across the continental U.S., and he came up empty.

And I’m certain that you don’t know this, given your tone, but the rural Middle East is not exactly overflowing with a cell signal. I called you dozens of times. We all called you, in case you were ignoring one of us for some reason.

When Bruce finally called us— when he was in a _city_ , Jaybird, because cities have cell signal— we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Although Damian and Alfred both demanded that you be put on the phone so that they could chew you out. Frankly, I don’t blame them an inch.

Leaving in the middle in the night, getting on an airplane to halfway around the world, barely leaving so much as a _note_ except for ‘see ya later’ written on an orange post-it note left on the fridge—

Honestly, I’m pretty sure that the two of them would still chew your ear off for what you did. We were fucking terrified for you, and rightly so, apparently.

Good god, Jaybird, I didn’t know you were dead for a week after the call from Bruce. Bruce called, Dami got on the earliest flight out to Beirut, which was three days after Bruce’s call. Then he had to go running around the desert, trying to catch up to the two of you, and then he found you and Dad at the smoking remains of the warehouse.

And he couldn’t call me until the two of them were back in the States with your body.

So no, Jason, I didn’t know that you were dead. I assumed that you were going to come back to the Manor with red ears and you were going to apologize for scaring us all silly. I thought that you were going to be grounded until you were twenty-five, except you would sneak out and mess around at Steph’s place or Damian’s place or my place, and eventually Bruce would heave an almighty sigh and tell you that you were officially ungrounded, after about two months of you declaring yourself to be ungrounded.

But instead you come back in a fucking coffin, and it’s closed casket because god, Jason, your skin had been melted and bubbling and you looked nothing like a human. It’s closed casket, and a private viewing, because no matter what anyone says, nobody wants to see Bruce Wayne cry, especially not over the grave of his teenage son.

He didn’t cry at all, Jaybird. And maybe you think that that’s some condemnation from the big man, but it wasn’t that at all. His eyes were glazed over, and he wasn’t paying attention to anyone, and he was in his fucking society voice that he uses when he’s donating to charities.

I got into a screaming fit with him about twenty minutes after the last guest— Connor— finally showed up.

He was drunk, and I was too high tensity to get drunk, and I guess I was blaming him for going after the warhead instead of after you, and so.

Screaming fit.

We both got separated at that point, Connor dragging me to my bedroom to talk, and Clark taking Bruce back to his study.

Cass and Duke both showed up too, Jaybird. You always liked Cass and Duke; Duke the first Robin, homegrown; and Cass, enough weapons and know-how to singularly take down the army of a medium-sized country.

M’gann came, too, and helped Alfred stress-bake.

Well, she joined him in stress-baking.

It was too goddamn quiet without you, Jaybird. Not to mention the fact that none of us who were Bats could so much as breathe without throwing acidic looks at people or looking like we were gonna burst into tears or tossing back a drink or whatever the fuck. Repressing our emotions as a coping mechanism.

It was pathetic, Jaybird. Half the people there didn’t know how to deal with a dead body so young.

Fucking Shazam had to leave about ten minutes before the first screaming match I had, and he had only stayed for twenty.

Jamie Reyes didn’t know what he was doing, but he kept sneaking glances at your coffin.

He’s only a year younger than you were, Jaybird.

Are.

… 

There’s really no good way to transition from talking about somebody’s wake, is there.

It was a really nice ceremony, I guess. No priests or anything, but a bunch of Leaguers came up to give eulogies. Clark, after he got Bruce calmed down, and Diana, and Ted Kord, and almost everyone, really.

It was kind of awkward when the Manhunter got down from the podium and nobody else stood up to take his place. Most everyone was staring at Damian or Steph or me, like one of us was going to jump up and recite some poetry about our dead brother.

I dunno. I barely remember most of the wake, but Clark eventually shooed everyone out. He hung around for a while afterwards looking like a sad puppy taking care of sadder puppies.

He ended up staying the night on a couch, and stayed through the burial the next day.

I didn’t really want him there. It was a family matter, and none of his business. He had gone to the wake. He had done what he had needed to do. What else was there?

But he kept sticking around.

He and Bruce talk together a lot, on Skype and through the League and with an old Nokia that Bruce got him.

Clark is probably one of the main reasons that Bruce got better, honestly. My screaming matches and Damian’s chucking utility belt gear at walls and Alfred’s stress-baking and Steph disappearing every day and talking to a plant, apparently, because we needed some real nuts to liven up the mourning process, probably weren’t helping him too much. And with Duke living on the West coast with whoever he’s dating and Cass doing her thing in Shanghai, there wasn’t anyone who might have been even slightly calm hanging around.

Except for fucking Clark.

So what if some random alien was what it took to get my dad to stop being a royal prick. So what if all he wanted to do with me was having shouting matches or be passive aggressive about my dead brother. Whatever.

… 

Sorry, Jaybird. This is your letter. For you, about you, made of you.

So, anyways.

You probably can’t get yourself registered at any schools, since you were never good at making up identities, but I can send you over some of my old textbooks from Gotham Academy. You could probably handle my sociology textbook from sophomore year too, if you want it.

And don’t try and lie to me and say that you don’t want it, Jason Peter Todd—Wayne.

I know how you are with your books.

Maybe it’ll give you the kick in the pants you need to want to get out of bed in the morning.

I’ll send over some Raisin Bran, too, so that I’ll at least know that you have something wherever you’re staying besides gas station sandwiches and ramen.

I hope that the weather finds you well when you finish reading this, Jaybird. As I write, the sky is overtaken with the summer storms that you were always so enamored with. Your library weather, your movie marathon weather, your family game day weather. Your go out into the garden and get yourself covered in mud and give Alfred a conniption weather.

This kind of weather always has and always will remind me of you and the times I shared with you, good and bad.

No homo, except for you’re my kid brother and basically still in kindergarten, so I shouldn’t even have to say that.

I’m glad that you found my birthday gift to you in good hands. I am not entirely sure how you found it in good hands, but I am happy for you nonetheless.

However, in the interest of preserving your state of being not in jail, I would recommend that you stop skulking around graveyards looking for birthday gifts.

Following that particular tidbit of advice would also probably do you wonders with the guys and dolls.

Brothers ~~’til death~~ forever,

Timothy Drake-Wayne


	3. dear brother; you are always welcome in my home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops on that accidental hiatus. picked a whole fuckin bouquet of whoopsadaisies on that one.

Dear Jason,

I am going to tell you a secret. I have not told Tim or Stephanie or Barbara or Richard. It is not really all that much of a secret, actually– nearly everyone who did not become Robin after me knows. Even some of the Leaguers.

The secret is that when I was eleven years old, I died.

During a dimensional invasion on Gotham, while I was protecting Wayne Tower, I was murdered by an alternate version of myself who was seven years older than me. I was dead for roughly six months, before Father, Duke, and Cassandra brought me back to life, on another planet.

I came back with superpowers, though those did not last. Obviously.

I always wondered why the alternate version of myself killed me. What he saw when he looked at himself as an eleven-year-old. What had happened to him which had made him kill me. Who had ordered him to murder a child, a child who could have been him in another life.

If he ever noticed that he was killing himself, literally.

I am telling you this so that you know that you are not the only Robin who has died.

And, if, if you ever want to talk about it, I am there for you.

But I know that our deaths are not the same, Jay. The alternate me, he killed me quickly. Snapped my neck. Over in less than a minute.

I am so sorry that I let the Joker hurt you for so long, Jay. I wish that I had come for you. I wish that I had saved you.

And, I think that my first death was part of the reason that Father first removed me from my post as Robin. Because he knew that he beat the odds once the first time he brought me back to life, and he did not want to continue to take risks. After every fight I got into, he would bring up the possibility of my retirement, and I always managed to resist him.

Until the last time I ever fought, and the first time you ever saw me fight.

I broke my arm in that fight, and would have nearly broken my neck, if that flagpole had not been where it was, if I had not honed my reflexes to the point that it was not a worry.

I could have died in that fight. It was I who was not careful enough. Father knew what was at risk, and he tried to prevent my injuries. He was perfectly careful, Jason, but he needed to take care of a child who thought that he was invulnerable.

And, the fact that Father had already brought that child back to life once just made the entire problem worse.

It was just less and less likely every time that he would be able to bring me back to life.

This is not why he did not try to bring you back, Jason.

Father does not know much about the Lazarus Pits. He thought that they could not bring someone back from the dead. And the way that he brought me back to life was a less than one in a billion chance; even if there was no doubt that he could bring you back to life, it is entirely possible that those higher than Father would have denied him access to it.

He thought it was hopeless, Jason. He thought that if there was no way to save you, he may as well not even bother.

I wish I had made him try, Jay. I wish I had stared him in the eye and demanded that he go out and look for a way to bring you back to us. I wanted you to come back to us more than anything else in the world.

I’m so glad that you came back to us, Jay. Even if you are not back with the family yet, even if you and Father have not reconciled yet, I’m so glad that you came back.

I have so much that I want to show you, Jay. So many projects that I worked out while you were… gone.

Every time I finished one, I kept looking up, opening my mouth to yell your name to show you the tech that you always loved to manhandle.

But you were never there.

I did yell your name sometimes, before I remembered. A week after your funeral– or three weeks, or nine months, because time somehow never seemed to remain steady after you– I shouted your name at one in the morning and got in a fistfight with Tim. Two months after your funeral, I shouted to you on Sunday afternoons, and almost made Alfred break a tea set. Six months or three days or five weeks after your funeral, I yelled for you when I was fiddling with a holographic projector and almost gave Father a heart attack.

Remembering never really stuck for me, Jason. It was physical work for me to remember you were dead, for me to not shout your name when I wanted your consultation on something.

It was easier for Tim and Steph to remember, I think. The hurting was so visceral for them– Steph could not stop talking about it, not for months, though never with Tim or Bruce or Alfred or me or anyone. And Tim was so angry, so hurting, so red hot burning.

I do not believe that I was in denial, but I do believe that I was not stuck in the moment that I learned that you died.

Tim and I got into too many fights while you were ~~dead~~ gone. Too much of me not remembering clearly enough and Tim not remembering anything, and the both of us getting into each other’s space without meaning to.

I did not sleep well. I slept in hour-long bursts at odd hours and for days at a time, but never for the right amount. Never enough, always too much.

I do not have all of the projects that I worked on while you were ~~de~~ gone. I burned nearly all of them, and I do not know why.

I can say that it was for Steph and for Tim, that I did not want two of my most self-destructive siblings to be alone with a bonfire, and that I needed something to burn.

It was not.

I do not know why I burned them, but I wish that I did. Like you said, I am no good at spotting when someone is cheating at board games, and I am much worse at completing puzzles. I always hate to have missing pieces.

There are still some of the ones that I worked on scattered throughout the Manor and my apartment. Very impressive, I think. One of my favorites is a holographic projector that can show up to three different Batman clones attacking an enemy at one time.

I would love to show it to you.

I hope you can come ~~back to the M~~ to visit me sometime, Jay. I could still use your help on some things, if you have got the time. You always could find solutions where I could not. Including when you stole the tires off of the Batmobile– that was one of the most impressive things that I have ever seen a Robin do, given all of the technology that was packed into it.

I admired you when we first met, Jay. You were so brave, and you didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Moxie, that’s what Duke used to call it. He started his team based on moxie, and you had plenty.

Particularly when you, as an underfed twelve-year-old, attempted to take out a twenty-seven-year-old in full body armor with nothing but a crowbar and your bare hands.

You’ve always been very impressive, Jay. I have no doubt that you still are.

And, even after what you did. The way you foiled that old woman at the museum– incredible! One of the cleverest ways someone has called Batman for help.

One of the few things I do not regret doing as Batman is bringing you into the family. You seemed so prepared, so brave, so… impregnable.

I’m sorry for what I did in the cave that day, Jay. I’m sorry for how badly I scared you, and that I never watched you get better.

I’m certain that your skills ~~were~~ are incredible. I saw some of your battles on television, and you were very impressive.

But you know, Jay, you’re not the only Robin who went to therapy. As a matter of fact, you hid yourself much better than any of the other Robins did.

I was placed in therapy for two years after Mother dropped me off with Father. Growing up in a clan full of assassins, being trained to fight since day one, fighting every day–

It tends to give a child unhealthy ideas about how to treat other people.

It was very lucky that Father found me a therapist when he did.

Jason, I would never think less of you for going through therapy. I could never. You’re my brother, and nothing you say or do will ever change that. If anything, I am proud of you for going to therapy and getting better.

I am so, so proud of you.

I wish that your mother had been your mother, Jason. I wish that you could have brought her back to the Manor and introduced all of us to her. I wish that she had been as good as you wanted to believe she was.

I am so sorry that I did not reply to your call. I did not receive the message that you sent me until ~~you~~ ~~your body~~ your phone returned to Gotham.

I currently have the voice message saved on my MacBook.

I did not want to lose ~~you~~ it, Jay. For all that I knew, that was the last time that I would ever hear your voice. I needed that recording.

I still have those photos of the two of us, mostly stuck up on my fridge. Held up with gaudy refrigerator magnets that you got me for my birthday and with simple magnets that fell off of grappling hooks and rappelling wire.

I didn’t even know how many pictures of you I had until I started putting them in photo albums and taking them down from off the walls.

I wish I had left them up, but it hurt so much sometimes, walking around the apartment and seeing your face everywhere.

Your toothbrush was still there from the last time you had slept over. There was still half the things from your overnight bag, since you never could keep everything together, and there was the book that you were in the middle of reading.

I have not moved your bookmark from your spot, in case you would like to come by and pick up the book.

If you would like to finish it.

 

  
I wish that you had told me what you were going to do before you left, Jay. I could have helped you.

And maybe you could not trust anyone at the time when you were planning your escape and getting on the plane and investigating which woman was your mother. But I wish that you had told us more than just that you were going to go searching for your mother.

My family controls much of where you were searching, Jay. At the very least, I could have possibly made things easier for you.

And I want you to realize that I did not want to let your death remain unavenged.

I had an encounter with the Joker four months– this one I am nearly certain of, but for all I know it was the day or three weeks or only an hour or two after your funeral.

I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to hurt the same way that ~~I~~ you had. I wanted him to feel all the pain and terror that he had inflicted on ~~my~~ ~~our~~ us.

I almost let him fall off the roof.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” I had said, his suit gathered in my fist, him hanging off the side of the building.

“W-Well, Batsy, wouldn’t that make you as bad as me?” He had asked.

He believed me. He believed that I would kill him. I believed that I would kill him. I do not think that there would have been anything amiss had he died.

“Wrong answer,” I had told him.

I was holding him by two fingers when Father appeared.

“Don’t,” he had said. One word, two words, one contraction, one apostrophe, no predicate, no subject. Just, “don’t.”

“And why should I not?” I had asked. “He deserves this for everything he has done to us.”

And he did, and he does, and he always will. There is no forgiveness in Earth nor Heaven nor Hell for the Joker.

“But think of who you will hurt by doing this,” Father had said. “Think of what Red Robin will think of you if you do this. Think of what Spoiler will think. Think of what A will think.”

And I wanted to believe that they would think that I had done the right thing. Tim would have killed him. Stephanie would have killed him. Duke would have killed him. Cassandra would have killed him.

Say what you will, but all of us will kill for our family.

I think so, at least, but it is always so hard to tell for me. Because Cassandra could have refused, because she hates to kill. Duke could have refused, for all that the Joker did to his parents– and maybe because of. Stephanie could have refused, because she honestly believes in Gotham. Tim could have refused, because he was afraid of slipping down the same path.

I wish I could say for certain which of my siblings would kill the Joker with no regrets.

But, what Father was not saying was this:

“What will _I_ think of you?”

I wish he hadn’t come.

Or, at least, I wish he had not said anything.

I could have killed the Joker if Father had not stopped me.

Instead, all I did was knock him out. Rabbit punch, throw him towards the center of the roof. Do not throw him over the edge of the roof– do not let his body break, do not let him die, for all that he has done to your family.

Father hugged me for that. I do not know why. I did not want him to.

I wish I had had the strength to overcome him and kill the Joker.

I wish that I had found Dick after you took him, as well. I wish that I had understood your clue. I wish that I had known you well enough to know your meaning from four words.

But I trust you, Jay, maybe more than I should. I trust that you would not have killed Dick. And you released him, too, so I do not think that my trust is misplaced. You are not a child killer, Jason, for all you are a killer.

To be a killer is not to be beyond redemption. Murder is not the final sentence with regards to your soul being damned.

All that is beside the point. You are no child killer, and I will forever believe in your redemption.

If you think that I’m wrong, that I need more information– please, do let me know. I do not want to act on this until I receive confirmation on my hunch.

Never act until you have all the information.

And we are helping him to get better, Jay. He is not scared more than usual. He does not have nightmares. He does not hoard food or hide away or insist on maintaining physical contact with one of us at all times.

He only seems to be concerned about improving his own physical strengths. He wants to show you what will happen to you the next time you mess with him.

He is not very good at anything besides blocking and flipping, at the moment.

We are working on it.

 

  
I do not know why you would tell me that it was my mother who brought you back. You know of our relationship– you know that she is literally replacing me. You know that she wants me dead. You know that she would kill me if she ever saw me in her territory again. You know that I would kill her before she could ever lay a single hand on me or my family.

I do not know why you would tell me that ~~the most~~ one of the most terrible people in my life is responsible for one of the greatest miracles. I do not know why you felt the need to tell me that she held you underwater until you started breathing again, until you stopped breathing because of the Lazarus water in your lungs. I did not need to know this.

If you and my mother are so close, maybe you should thank her on my behalf. If you ask her nicely, she may give you a sword as a souvenir. Flip a coin on whether she will place it in your hands or shove it hilt-deep into your back.

I will try my best to have a good fucking life with that, I guess.

Happy fucking birthday, Jason.

Go get ‘em, tiger.

Yours sincerely,

Damian Wayne al Ghul

P.S. I want to say that I am not angry with you either, but I am, to a certain extent. I am angry that you told me what my mother did to you, but I am not angry with you about the other things.

I do sincerely love you.

P.P.S. I hope that we can both be okay someday, too.


	4. dear son; i am sincerely sorry for the result of our falling out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to say, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, my bad for not updating  
> 

Dear ~~son~~ Jason,

~~I don’t think that you understand quite how much you have hurt me.~~

~~I didn’t realize how you felt~~

Of course I knew that you were the one writing, Jason.

I knew as soon as I saw the address on the envelope, the slashes through the zeroes, the straight line—letters, everything about it was _you_ , Jason.

~~I wish I knew what to say to you~~

~~I wish I knew what you wanted me to tell you~~

What should I say, Jason? No, I didn’t go to prison after you died. And clearly, I’m still allowed in the door of adoption agencies without being accused of searching for my next murder victim.

It’s not that I got off with nothing but a sympathy piece in the Gotham Gazette.

They sent a social worker to talk to me, and Damian and Tim and Alfred and Cass and Barbara and Duke, and then another after I adopted Dick.

~~You really don’t~~

~~Jason, I just~~

Ethiopia killed me, Jason. Your death killed me. I barely made it home. I wasn’t Batman for weeks.

I didn’t trust myself with it.

I didn’t know what I would do if I saw——

I didn’t know what I would do. I was closer to the edge than I ever have been.

~~Son~~

Jason, what the HELL do you think is the first thing I saw

~~WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK THE JOKER DID~~

Jason, OF COURSE he showed me.

He recorded the entire damn thing.

G-d, Jason, I don’t know how I made it. I watched that damned tape hundreds of times, thousands of times.

~~Do you think that I didn’t feel anything, Jason?~~

~~Every time~~

I never watched it without crying, Jason.

It always focused on your face, just before the Joker left, and I—

You looked so damned _broken_ , Jason.

~~If I had~~

~~I wish~~

Jason, I would have taken your place in a heartbeat.

And, as much as you want to deny it to yourself or to me or to G-d or to the universe, you are my son, Jason. You are my son and I love you, Jason.

G-d knows I’ve never been able to hold a grudge against one of my kids.

But you can take all the time you want before you want to talk to me, Jason. ~~You were~~ Your letter sounded so angry, Jason. And probably I deserve that anger. From your point of view, I replaced you in a hot second after you died. ~~You died~~

I didn’t go looking for Richard, Jason. I never wanted Robin to exist again.

It was my damn fault that you died, Jason, of course ~~I couldn’t~~

~~I never wanted~~

G-d, Jason, it wasn’t even my idea. I didn’t even know that Richard was Robin. I was on the other side of the country, with Clark. I couldn’t—

Jason, the house was nothing but you everywhere I went. All your games and your books and you.

Your things are still here, son, if you want to pick them up. Or—

Your room is still open, kiddo. Your plants are still alive, We haven’t gotten rid of any of your things. Of course we wouldn’t.

Duke was the one who brought in Richard, the same way he brought in Damian and Steph.

He’s from the circus, Jason, He already knows half the moves that it took all the rest of you kids months to learn, he’s grown up with them. ~~He’s a natural.~~

He reminds me of you, Jason.

He’s got all your spark and all your bite and half your anger, and he’s so _you_ sometimes that I used to forget that he wasn’t.

G-d, he’s so curious. He’ll make a good detective. 

He was desperate to know you, Jason. He wanted to know who came before him so badly, he wanted to know what happened to you. ~~I don’t~~

I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt anything. I’m certain of it. He’s so _good_ , Jason. He just wanted to know–

He just–

He wanted to know how he could avoid dying, Jason. He’s not like you were when you first put on the Robin costume, not like a boy who thought he would live forever. He never declared himself invincible.

He’s not cautious, like Damian was. He doesn’t plan ahead, like Tim did. He’s not as brave as Duke was, or as good at predicting his opponent’s moves like Cass was, or had as much background information as Steph did and he’s not as desperate to win as Barbara is.

(Barbara Gordon is Batgirl now, have you heard? Has Cass told you? She’s so proud of Barbara. She’s so proud that Batgirl is back.)

He’s new, Jason, like all the Robins and Batgirls are new. But he still reminds me of you more than he does any of the others.

I’m so sorry for whatever I did, Jason, that made you think that you needed to hurt him for me to see you. I’m so sorry that I didn’t come for you, that I didn’t punish the Joker enough, that I hurt you so badly that you wanted to hurt him.

He’s not even scared, Jason, Tim and Steph and Duke were so much more scared when he came back than he was. He was angry, but he wasn’t afraid of you. He wasn’t even afraid of me. He marched into my office like he was meeting the President and he demanded to know about you.

(Remember when you met the president, Jason, and you asked for his autograph and you got it framed? It’s still hanging up in your room, right above your desk.)

He wanted to know how long you were Robin. He wanted to know why you stopped being Robin, why you just reappeared as the Red Hood, he wanted to know how you changed from being Robin to being someone who kidnapped people.

I lost it.

I absolutely went ballistic, Jason, and I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t his fault that he was so curious, it wasn’t your fault that you died. I just didn’t want to acknowledge that you had died, that you had started hurting people.

That wasn’t fair of me, Jason. It’s not fair that I put you before Dick, that I still have you up on a pedestal like you’re the perfect Robin no one else can live up to, because everyone else lived.

It isn’t fair to Dick, who only wants to save people and arrest whoever it was that killed his parents. Too optimistic to say arrest, maybe. He’s only nine, I have to wonder if he wants them dead, if he wants to hurt them the way they hurt him. That’s what I wanted, when my parents died.

It isn’t fair to you, either, who is back from the dead and can’t live up to the expectations that I have for you, the sanitized memories I have of you, how I’m only remembering the good stuff about you and how much more hurt I’ll be when you make mistakes, because I don’t remember your mistakes.

He hid, of course, because I had hurt him for no good reason.

He hides in the hedge maze, like he’s trying to get lost from what’s happening, like he doesn’t think that I know the hedge maze well enough to be able to find him no matter how many holes he digs under the corners.

I don’t know how long I let him hide before I went out to find him. I don’t know how long I gave myself to calm down before I left to make sure Dick was alright.

I found him eventually, sitting with his knees drawn up under the statue of the angel Gabriel.

I can’t tell you what I said to him, Jason. It was only the same things that I used to say to you, whenever I found you after you ran off, but it’s for me and him to know, not for you.

He’s still angry with you, Jason, of course he is. He’s furious that you kidnapped him.

It’s not that he forgives you, Jason, it’s like–

He understands _why_ you did it, Jay. He understands it probably better than I do, better than I ever will, and he accepts it. He doesn’t forgive it, but he accepts it.

I am so sorry, Jason, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I was a terrible father to you, I know. I should have tried better, I should have asked Damian, I should have done a lot of things to make sure that you were happy. I should have asked you how therapy was going, I should have tried to help you with your schoolwork, I should have been gentler with you. I should have remembered that I was dealing with a child, not with a rowdy teenager or an adult.

I should have been there for you, Jason, the way that Damian was. I should have tried harder to be your father, instead of letting Damian take care of everything on my behalf. You deserved better than what I could give you.

Damian wanted me to do better for you, Jason, and I did get angry with him. You know the way I am, my way or the highway, and G-d I wish that I had chosen the right way.

Jason, I still love you so much. I will always love you. ~~You can’t unde~~

You don’t know how your death tore me apart, Jason.

I couldn’t stay at the Manor, Jason, not with all the memories and not with the ghosts of you that I saw around. You flipping around the rafters in the cave, you balancing dishes on top of Tim’s head while he slept, you painting your nails in Stephanie’s room, you, you, you everywhere.

I nearly broke my fucking hand trying to punch Clark when he tried to come over. He wanted to help me through it, but damned if I wanted his help.

But instead of getting angry with me for it or pitying me for it, he just rolled through it and then offered to talk.

G-d, Jason, you know that I don’t talk. I never “talk” the way that people want me to, about my emotions and how I’m feeling.

Only Clark, only the best out of all of us, could manage to get me to speak sincerely about my emotions. Only Clark, who was always talking about emotions, who was always finding the right thing to do, could get me to speak about my emotions.

I barely did, anyway. It’s just that I was nearly overflowing. I was pushing myself past the brink.

I don’t want to talk about what he and I talked about, Jason. Some things are private, like what I said to Richard or what I said to Clark. But we talked, and I felt better sometimes and worse other times.

I moved across the country for a good six months between ~~your death~~ when you left us and when you returned. Just me and Clark, in a small house, me learning how to be around people again and Clark helping me.

It was weird, definitively, but there’s nothing that wouldn’t be strange about what happened after what happened to you.

Listen, Jason, I don’t know what to do. I barely knew what to do with you before ~~you died~~ you left us, and I mostly just left you to Damian and Tim and Duke and Steph and Cass and Claire. You had plenty of older siblings, and I had too much on my plate and I never really tried to understand you.

And I’m sorry for that, Jason, I swear to G-d that I’m sorry, and if I could go back in time to fix it, if I could make myself pay more attention to you, if I could make it more obvious that I cared about you, if I could have ignored all my responsibilities and focused on you (because you should have been my top priority, Jason, and I’m sorry that you weren’t) I would do it in a heartbeat.

I love you, Jason, and I always will love you. You are still my son. I will always think of you as my son, I will come when you need me and I will try my best to protect you from the rest of the world, from the Joker and from the police and from yourself, if that’s what I need to do. I will protect you from anything, Jason.

You’re still welcome here, Jay. You will always be welcome at the manor. Your room is still the same as it was, and your plants– well, your plants are. Not healthy. But Jason, your plants are still there and you can come back to help them.

We could have family game night again, if you want. You’re still invited. You’re always invited.

We could have a movie night, like we used to. Do you remember that time, Jason, when you came down with the flu and threw a fit because I wouldn’t let you go out on patrol with me? I wound up skipping patrol, foisting it off on Damian or Claire or Duke, and I came back up from the Batcave and watched dinosaur documentaries with you until morning.

I guess my point is that you’re still welcome here, Jason. Not just at the manor, not just physically here, but you will always be a part of this family.

Love you, son.

Sincerely,

Bruce


	5. dear brother; i hope you can understand that my anger has not yet fully abated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> youngest brother

Dear jerkwad,

I don’t care!

I don’t care if you’re sorry for what you did to me, I don’t care if you’ll never do anything like it ever again, I don’t care if you were out of your mind when you did it, I don’t care! I don’t want to hear your stupid pity party baloney about how eventually I’ll kick your butt! I’ll kick your butt right now!

You’re a total buttwipe, and I don’t want to be the one to coach you through this! I don’t want to be the one who has to coach you through being forgiven, because I don’t forgive you! And I won’t forgive you for a long time because what you did was messed up and it scared me and you can’t just ~~right~~ write me a letter telling me that ~~your~~ you’re sorry! Because I don’t want to forgive you right now!

You can say whatever nice words you want, you can remember whatever fun little anecdotes you have about board games and game night and guess what–

I still won’t care!

Look, Bruce told me about what happened to you. He told me all of it. He told me about you, and he told me about you and being reckless and searching for your mom and wanting everything to be right, and I get it. I understand that. There’s a lot going on with me, and I would probably do the same thing.

Bruce told me everything, and I get it. You died, and then you came back and you were lost and scared and then you saw Bruce, the guy who adopted you, and he was running around with some new kid and you thought that he had forgotten you like that and had given up on you. And that must ~~of~~ have hurt a lot, since he was like your dad and all. But he didn’t forget you! He never shuts up about you!

I spent my entire first month of being Robin getting compared to you and how good you were at ~~jimnastics~~ gymnastics and how amazing you were at everything and how I should try more hard to be like you.

And there’s a statue of you! There’s a statue of you in Sidekick Mountain and your uniform is in a glass case in the cave and it doesn’t look like anyone is forgetting about you anytime soon!

Maybe it doesn’t feel like that from where you’re looking, but everybody loves you! Maybe if you weren’t running around the city shooting at stuff and acting like a jerk you’d be able to tell!

So yeah, no, I’m not gonna forgive you, but I’m not gonna play your stupid game about how you’re the bad guy of the story.

THIS ISN’T A STORY, STUPID!!!

This is REAL LIFE and if you’re going to say that you’re the bad guy of the story ~~than~~ then you’re saying that you’re a real life bad guy!

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A JERK DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE A BAD GUY!

And no I don’t like you but that doesn’t mean that I think you’re one of the bad guys that get put in prison. I think that you need help and I think you’re mad at everybody and I think that you feel bad for yourself way too much but I don’t think you’re a bad guy.

Also, I don’t really understand your ~~metafor~~ metaphor about candles. I don’t think that any of us are addicted to being Robin, I just think that we all like helping people a lot. That’s why Duke started Robin with all his friends, isn’t it? Because Gotham was really bad and Batman was only doing so much and Duke just wanted to help people. I don’t think it’s like Bruce is getting us hooked on being Robin, I think he’s showing us how to help people and we all just really want to help people.

(Even you, even though I don’t think that Bruce likes how you get your point across.)

And you’re really stupid if you think that I could ~~of~~ have kept going at the circus without doing anything about my parents. That’s the whole _point_ about all us Robins, dummy! We all want to help people and solve crimes. We can’t just sit back after bad stuff happens and move on with it. That’s why Bruce started Batman! That’s why all of this happened and why it keeps happening!

And I DO, actually, think that living at the circus was a good upbringing! My folks were real nice, and there were a bunch of adults that I could go to if I needed help, so I could talk to just about any grown-up whenever I had a problem, if it were about homework or if it were about girls or whatever. I don’t mind if you don’t like it, but if you make fun of how I grew up again, I’m gonna find you and I’m gonna kick your butt.

But I do think you’re right about everyone here being not great role models. Except Steph, I think, but that’s just cause she seems like she’s got the most of her life under control. I couldn’t sleep the other night so I went downstairs to practice on the acrobatics stuff and Tim was in the kitchen drinking coffee. And it was LATE, it was like after ten and he was drinking coffee and doing stuff on his computer.

I would also say Duke except for I’ve only seen Duke for about five minutes total so I can’t make any conclusive statements.

I do think that Damian and Bruce are good role models though, because they both look really super cool when ~~their~~ they’re fighting and they’ve been training me to fight like them too (and it’s just about the coolest thing _ever_ , flipping through the air and learning how to land on a stuffed dummy).

Also, I lied to you earlier. I told you that I got it and that I understood why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I don’t actually, because I haven’t ever died.

I’ve died _almost_ before, at the circus. My mom reached out and she didn’t catch me and just for half a second I was scared I was gonna die, and then I fell and the fire breather caught me like it wasn’t no big deal. So I think that I know how you felt a little bit, except for the part where I lived.

But I don’t know how you felt when you came back, because I’ve never gotten replaced before. I’ve never died, I’ve never run away from home, I’ve never come back to somewhere after a really long time and everything’s different and it’s all changed without me. I might still, because I have a long while to be living and a lot of stuff can happen during a life, so all that stuff might still happen to me.

So I don’t get it, I don’t understand it, but I figure that I can guesstimate well enough to figure that it probably hurt an awful lot, and you were probably scared and confused because of how everything was different and on account of how you died and all, and then Bruce had replaced you. I figure that’s why you got all mean.

(Also, you definitely don’t have to feel ~~rusponsibel~~ responsible for me, because I already have Alfred and Bruce and Damian and Tim and Steph and Duke and Cass to feel responsible for me, and that’s already way too many grown-ups for me, even if you aren’t technically a grown-up. So you don’t have to feel responsible for me at all whatsoever.)

Also, I already know that I can’t trust grown-ups (except for I do anyways, because most of the grown-ups that I’ve known have been good people) so I don’t do that anyway.

But I do think that you’re wrong about grown-ups, about how they just wanna manipulate me and force me to do stuff. Because Bruce told me, first thing straightaway, that if I wanted to be done after I arrested the guy who killed my folks, that I could just keep on staying with him and not have to be Robin and not have to help him with Batman stuff.

Except for I wanted to, because of like the stuff I said earlier about how I think that all of us really want to help people and help solve problems, and that’s why we all agree when Bruce asked us if we wanna fight crime, because we really do want to help people and help the police and help save the world, like a superhero (and also, we aren’t technically superheroes because we aren’t ~~metta~~ meta humans, like the Flash is. I don’t know if Superman counts, because I know that Superman is an alien, so he can’t be a meta human.)

Have you ever noticed that grown-ups act funny around kids?

Maybe not, since you’re already pretty close to being a grown-up, but grown-ups always act all like kids aren’t allowed to know anything about anything bad.

(And I think that you’re becoming an adult based on how you don’t think that I know any swear words. I know hell and shit and ass and even sex and penis. AND I know fuck too, now, since you said it a bunch in your letter and I totally did tell Tim and since he’s also the one who’s been helping me with the spelling.)

Anyways, grown-ups always think that kids gotta be protected from stuff like that, like we don’t know nothing about nothing bad. I think that that’s also why Bruce can run around in a bat suit without feeling goofy, and why everyone else runs around wearing costumes and fighting crime. It’s cause when they were kids, they weren’t protected by grown-ups so they had to see the bad stuff, so now they don’t feel like all the way grown-ups because they didn’t get treated like kids long enough, so none of them feel goofy when they put their undies on over their pants.

So I don’t think it’s a bad thing that kids get treated like they have to get protected from stuff, but it’s annoying when your parents are already dead and stuff and you already arrested the guy who killed them, because once you do that, you’re not really a kid anymore.

And I already _know_ about all the stuff in the mansion, because the first thing I did after I stopped always feeling like I was gonna die from sadness from my parents being dead was explore the whole entire thing from top the bottom (which is also how I found five different entrances to the Batcave just on the first floor, not even counting all the ones on the other floors). So I know about all the rooms already, and I do think that the theatre is weird because it’s bigger than my family’s whole entire trailer was back at the circus, so I really don’t enjoy it at all whatsoever. I do like the library though, since the circus didn’t have a whole bunch of any books at all, and the library has just about every book, as far as I can tell. I also really like the fact that it’s decorated like the big top was back at the circus, and it kind of feels like home.

I haven’t gone to the attic, though, because I just don’t like attics ever since I read a book from the library about a bunch of kids whose grandma locks them in the attic and then tries to kill them with poison.

And I don’t really think that I’ll be able to make it to the park, since I’m not even paler than Tim and also whenever I jump off the swings and do a flip, all the other kids try to too, and they just get bloody noses.

Also, I’m sorry that it took me so long to get this letter to you, because I’ve more been using it as kind of like a diary to write down whenever I get really really mad at you and remember how you kidnapped me, but now I think I”m mostly done with it, and I’m a lot less mad at you than I was at the beginning of this letter.

And even though I’m less mad, I am totally TOTALLY gonna beat you up someday, because I’m gonna be the best Robin that there’s ever been, and I’m gonna be the absolute coolest hero in all of Gotham, so there.

~~Sinseerly~~ Sincerely,

Richard Grayson

P.S.

You are totally totally wrong about games that I cheat at. It’s not fair to cheat at cards, because cards is all about luck and it ain’t fair to cheat at a luck game. But I can cheat at Candyland really good, or any of those brain games where it’s all about learning something about animals or doing ~~craneum~~ cranium puzzles or whatever.

P.P.S.

I would win against you at Twister, because I grew up in a circus and my first babysitter was the contortionist, so I would definitely definitely win even if you did cheat, that’s how super awesome I am at Twister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took me a while to get dicks voice right


End file.
